


if i said i liked your armor would you hold it against me?

by orangecookiekay



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone lives/Nobody dies, Friends to Lovers, Halo au, Height Differences, M/M, Not Beta Read, ODST Orbital Drop Shock Trooper(s), ODST!Jeremy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, SPARTAN-II, Spartan-II!Ryan, Team Battle Buddies - Freeform, battle buddies, dont ask when or where the setting is because i sure as shit don't know im just writing, everyone else is background - Freeform, filthy casual fan tries to write filthy casual au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-10-08 18:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17391221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangecookiekay/pseuds/orangecookiekay
Summary: They say Spartans never die, but they also don't know how to live, and Ryan-060 is no exception. Enter one Jeremy Dooley from the ODST, who one way or another reminds Ryan that he's more than a walking talking super weapon.





	1. things a man cannot know

**Author's Note:**

> -the halo laso vids make me wish i still had my 360 and my halo 4 copy so to cope i wrote this  
> -title is from an rvb joke  
> -the chapter titles' a line from a song i was listening to at the time of posting idk

“You guys were trained for a long ass time, right?” Is one of the first things out of the ODST’s mouth since they started to do recon over a cliff staring down a Covenant camp. It wasn’t the first thing the ODST had ever said to him though. The first thing Dooley had said when they first were put together was, “ _Fuck_ you’re tall. Do you get signal up there? I’m Dooley, by the way, nice to meet you!”

It had been weird, for certain. Ryan-060 was used to ODST’s glaring him down or cussing up a storm or throwing some serious passive aggressive rage his way. But not Dooley. No, Dooley’s been an unorthodox entity of friendliness and sarcasm that should be off-putting to Ryan and his woefully undeveloped social skills. It’s weird, yes. It’s also surprisingly nice. It startled a chuckle out of Ryan at the time because he’s actually pretty standard height for a Spartan at six foot eleven. Seven foot three in his armor. Dooley, however, is _small._ Absolutely _tiny._ His ODST gear only barely puts him at five foot six and he’s even smaller than that.

“Classified but yes. A long ass time.” Ryan replies with a snort. They were both on scopes, Ryan on the assault rifle and Dooley on a sniper. The difference between a Spartan and an ODST made it roughly even out however.

“You ever had real donuts?”

Ryan first confirms that they both see the Jackals dispersed around the camp taking up sniper nests-which yes they both do, fifteen to be exact-before answering, “I _do_ eat, you know. I’ve had my fair share of mess hall food and MRE’s.”

Dooley chuckles, “No I mean like the donuts from an actual bakery. Legit heavenly goodness. Fresh baked, warm, real sugar and vanilla.”

Ryan blinks as his words rush over him, a spark of an old, old memory that flees as quickly as it appears. “We don’t get leave.” Spartans never leave the battlefield. Even being ship-bound or base bound is merely a clock counting down to their release back into the field “Or much down time. And I’ve never had to go undercover in civilian territory or do security detail for a higher brass.”

Dooley spots some nasty looking turrets that are going to be a real pain in the ass, then he turns to look at Ryan. They both have their helmets on, so they don’t see the others’ eyes—and Ryan remembers that he has no idea what Dooley looks like underneath. They haven’t seen the other’s face, each as much of a mystery to one as the other. It’s incredibly common for Ryan to only ever see helmets instead of faces in the field, and it’s rare anyone outside of the Spartans sees his either. So the sudden desire to know what the color of Dooley’s eyes are that hits him is startling to say the least.

“Oh, _dude,_ I’m gonna have to take you out to get a box-dozen. The real thing will blow your mind.”

“What, like a date? A donut date?”

“Sure, why not? My treat, pal.” Dooley says, and takes note of the time. They both stand up from their spot overlooking the covenant camp, and follow the markers back to rendezvous with the rest of the group.

“That’d be a sight; an ODST taking a Spartan-II on a date to a bakery.” He knows theoretically that if such an excursion were to be possible that of _course_ they aren’t going to be in armor, but the image still sticks in his head-especially given that he, again, doesn’t know what Dooley looks like. The imagery in his head therefore consists of himself, a seven foot three armor clad behemoth, and Dooley, a stocky but absolutely tiny five foot six armored ODST, full armor on, standing in line for baked goods. He has no idea what an actual bakery would look like, though, so he ends up imagining a much smaller, more compact version of the mess hall from _In Amber Clad_.

“I bet you’d like the ones covered in chocolate.” Dooley remarks, and Ryan can hear the grin in his voice.

Ryan exhales a very short, soft breath akin to a chuckle, “I _do_ like my coffee with a little bit more sugar than is regulation.”

“Ha! Knew you’d have a sweet tooth.”

“Congratulations, Dooley. You now know more secrets about one Spartan than any other officer on board the Amber. ONI will be coming to collect you for questioning for having discovered such classified info.” He says.

“Well fuck me, I guess. So how much about you _is_ classified? Is your favorite color classified information?”

Ryan considers for a moment before answering with a minute shrug, “I don’t think so….It’s blue. Or black.”

Dooley’s visor lowers and rises as he takes stock of the blue and black armor and the solid red-orange dome visor with a white skull printed onto it that Ryan is cloaked in, and nods, “Huh, and I pegged you for a red man.”

“Red is a close third.” Ryan gives him that much as they make their way back.

“So I was close. My favorite color is green. But orange and purple are pretty nice too.”

Ryan stops at the edge of the underbrush just before the campsite. Dooley senses his halting hesitation and follows suit, stopping under the cover of the forestry around them and looking up at him, his helmet leaning to the side inquisitively. Kinda like a cat.

“What color are your eyes?” It feels stupid to be asking such a mundane question about another soldier that Ryan knows he has no guarantee of ever seeing again after the mission, and that was even assuming the ODST comes out alive. But, somehow, Dooley’s charmed his way into making Ryan ask questions he never thought he would as a Spartan. So a small part of Ryan, a part that he thought was as dead as the people that always inevitably died around him, dared to hope Dooley would make it through the mission.

“Are you asking me to take off my helmet?”

“What? No! I-forget I asked.” Ryan flushes with embarrassment. But before he takes another step to leave the underbrush and enter the camp, Dooley lifts a hand up that lightly slaps against the armor on his sternum to stop him, and Ryan does.

“Brown. My eyes are brown. Like, uh…” and Dooley pauses to look around, his helmet swiveling before it stops and he points behind them, “Like that tree. But warmer, I guess.”

Ryan follows the direction of his pointing finger to the tree. It’s definitely a brown color, a deep brown.

“Okay.” He says with finality, because, well, he doesn’t know where to go from there. Dooley nods and they both finally exit the forestry to enter the camp. They give a report on their scouting to the sergeant in charge and Dooley splits to go talk with his other ODST partner Tuggey.

Ryan tries to imagine the tree trunk’s color as iris colors, but all he gets is the image of literal trees in his eyes. He’s just going to have to hope that Dooley survives the mission, and the next one, and the one after that until they have a safe enough moment that he can get to see what color Dooley’s eyes are.


	2. a rhythm in rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan's proficiency in poorly timed bad jokes about a dead person strikes, and Jeremy climbs trees.

Even though Ryan outranks him, the sergeant remains in charge for the duration of their mission: clear out the Covenant, reclaim the radio tower, regroup with the other scattered squadrons, and then clean them out of the UNSC outpost.

Ryan and Dooley take point, Dooley on his sniper rifle and Ryan with an assault rifle in his hands and a pistol on his hip. Behind them close by is Tuggey, the other ODST, and a swelled squadron of marines behind. They trudge carefully through the forestry, as quiet as UNSC gear will allow them. Then Dooley waves for them to hold back. He and Ryan pull up their rifles, and start looking for the bare twinkle of glowing violet that is their only sign of the hiding Jackals.

Within thirty seconds, twelve out of the original fifteen they had counted fall out of their nests, dead, and the ground forces immediately swarm into activity. The other three are still obscured by the canopy, scattering to new nests. Ryan hears the trudging of ground force Covenant and knows they won’t be able to find the other three snipers until they engage with the ground force.

To his surprise, Dooley doesn’t stay behind the group to maintain sniper distance. He keeps with the group, albeit along the sides and a few steps back, his rifle sweeping for the remaining snipers. Ryan takes point with the braver marines following him, immediately shooting down the front line of Grunts meeting them first. Another line takes up behind them, and Ryan only shoots the two he needs out of the way before he dashes through them. While the marines following him take care of the remaining Grunts on the second line, Ryan’s already engaging in a standoff with an Elite and two shielded Jackals that weren’t part of the snipers.

Ryan blasts the shields off the Elite while the marines catching up to him try to gun down the shielded Jackals. He has enough mind to notice a sniper shot nail the two shielded Jackals in one go before his rifle punches holes into the Elite’s body. He moves on, noting the two Grunts and Jackal that fall dead by his feet before he’s even turned to them. Interestingly, he can see Dooley in his peripherals walking on top of the massive tree branches as easily as a catwalk. When he climbed up the tree branches, Ryan doesn’t know, but despite the height he looks absolutely at home in the trees.

“Are the snipers dead yet?” Tuggey asks over their com units that all of them, including Ryan, are privy to, her movements on the ground parallel to Dooley above her on the tree-branch cat walk. While Ryan cleans out from the left side, Tuggey and the other soldiers work on the right, and high above them Dooley takes the canopy.

“Still two more.” Dooley answers after he commits a shot and a Jackal shaped body consequently slumps off a tree and slams into the ground, unmoving. Their entourage as a whole moves up, two steps behind Ryan who tears through the center of the ground forces with vicious efficiency.

Ryan glimpses Dooley among the trees, crossing a chasm between two branches with a nimble jump that a man with his stocky body type wouldn’t usually be capable of but somehow he is. Dooley’s acrobatic in a way he really didn’t except.

They’re making quick work-Tuggey shoots down a Grunt that had been jumping into a Ghost vehicle before it even shifted to life, and a marine tosses a grenade into it to make certain it won’t be lifting off the ground permanently. The rate they’re going they’ll be marching past the camp and just a few minutes out from turrets he and Dooley had spotted earlier, then ahead of them is the radio tower they need to reach so that Sergeant Riley can coordinate with the other scattered squads.

Except he’s been missing from the unit chatter for the past two minutes and Ryan’s instincts tell him the worse before he even asks over their com, “Where the hell is Sergeant Riley?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Comes the reply from a marine that dangerously sounds hesitant and grim..

“That’s not an answer.” Ryan reprimands dryly.

“No, it is, it’s just not a good one.” Dooley says.

“What does that _mean_?” Ryan asks as he shoots, pole vaults over a ledge, and proceeds to mow down a pile up of Grunts and square up with another Elite. Tuggey from afar shoots out the Grunts, and Ryan is able to slam the butt of his rifle into the Elite’s throat a second after Dooley snipes the shield off. The sheer amount of force is enough to snap the Elite’s neck and they all move up.

“Well I _found_ him. But uhhhh….” The same marine drones awkwardly.

“He’s dead.” Ryan answers for him.

“Yeah he’s dead. Two needles straight through his visor-maybe even his eye sockets .” Dooley confirms for the marine, and from his place in the field Ryan can glimpse to see him looking over his temporary sniping perch below him. Ryan can’t see over the hulking covenant vehicle blocking his view on his right and, considering Dooley is the one to relay the manner of Sergeant Riley’s death, decides he doesn’t need to.

“Oh god I think I can see the needle tip all the way through the other side of his _heeeaagh_ -“ the marine that began speaking chokes off his words as he gags. There’s the soft sound of patting as someone tries to ease the marine’s nausea over the condition of the now clearly deceased Sergeant Riley.

“Oh, so he really got the point across.” Ryan says. There’s a beat of dead silence on the unit chatter and he suddenly feels very isolated and wrong, his heart and stomach clenched in ice with no sign of a physical source. He shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have gotten involved in the banter, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t help it!

“….oh my god.” Tuggey says somewhere between scandalized and incredulous. It doesn’t actually sound genuine though, so Ryan doesn’t know what to make of her reaction.

He does know, however, that the gasping “ _Point across, Jesus,_ ” that Dooley says in between his guilty crackles of laughter is very genuine.

“That’s terrible. You’re terrible.”

“Somehow I don’t think he crossed his heart and hoped to die.” Dooley says and the words throw Ryan for a loop.

“What?” Tuggey says, voicing hers, the rest of the unit listening, and Ryan’s confusion.

“For that needle in his eye.”

“ _Jeremy, oh my god._ ” Tuggey says after a guilty cackle of her own laughter. Her voice does an excellent job to mask the soft chuckle that reverberates in Ryan’s chest.

“Too much, Linds?”

“Too _soon_.”

“You guys are all terrible and you’re all going to hell. I hope you know that.” says a marine in the coms. “Riley wasn’t even that bad of a Sergeant.”

Ryan manages to hold back the biting reply in his mind that Riley hadn’t exactly been a _good_ sergeant either.

“Eh, we’re not called _Helljumpers_ for nothing, and it’s Jeremy’s fault!” Tuggey says. While the two ODSTs continue their back and forth Ryan quietly tries out the full name in a murmur so low and quiet only another Spartan could even hear, to feel how it rolls off his tongue and how the vowels and constants flow. _Jeremy Dooley_. _Jer-emy Doo-ley. Je-remy Dool-ey._ _Jere-my Doo-oo-ley._

“Is not! He started it!” Dooley snapped back.

“Oh sure, _blame the Spartan_.” Tuggey says as she stops to collect Riley’s tags. Ryan steps forward and then immediately rewinds backward to duck behind a tree as his armor shields drop drastically to half, his body dead center nailed by two shots. Right, two snipers.

“Dooley-“ Ryan begins, but quiets immediately as two shots from Dooley’s sniper rifle snap in response. The remaining snipers hit the ground dead.

“I gotcha, pal.” Dooley says, a smile in his voice. Ryan hums back to him in appreciation. The site becomes quiet again with only the sounds of the forest fauna in the air. Ryan takes front to relay to their entourage that he would be taking command in the wake of Riley’s death. No one objects, just a few pipes of “Yessir.”

Dooley shoulders his sniper rifle as he climbs down the tree and Ryan finds himself watching the ODST’s descent. He’s as graceful and practiced in climbing down as he was walking atop the thick branches like it was a catwalk. The way his visor swivels to Ryan as he hits the ground and the easy way he walks inclines Ryan to believe he’s smiling at him, but he could be reading too much into the body language.

“Sharp shooting, Dooley. Keep it up til we get back to the Amber.” Ryan says.

“Oh you know it, buddy. I promised you a donut date after all.” Dooley says, unconcerned with being heard as the unit chatters for a moment and drowns them both out.

“You did and I do intend to collect one day.” Ryan smiles as he replies, even knowing the other man can’t see it. In his mind he tries to reimagine trees as eye colors and fails.

Once more Ryan and Dooley take point and lead the way forward, rifles out and walking beside the other, Tuggey a few steps behind Dooley and the other marines following suit.


	3. gears won't turn and the leaves won't grow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan is only marginally like real lowkey a show off, while Jeremy takes up a challenge to earn a four letter word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh notes have some notes if you want but not necessary to read tbh:  
> msgt = master sergeant: 8th enlisted grade in marines (or at least in us marines, which im basing it on, and figured it carries over roughly the same in halo)  
> petty officer: depending on the class is either the sixth, fifth, or fourth grade. ryan's specifically first class, so he's sixth grade, but if the setting is informal he can just drop the class part and say petty officer. he's two steps behind geoff, three steps behind master chief. 
> 
> also dropped obligatory rvb references

“So Sergeant Riley had the key code necessary to login into the radio tower systems?” Ryan asks. He doesn’t let the annoyance drip into his voice, but the minute tension of his shoulders and his stance stands as a hint. The first camp had been easy to dive past, but the rest of the pathway they had forged to get to the radio tower had proceeded to tear out numbers from their squad. Two fifths of their squadron laid dead behind, and a handful more were injured and doing quick patchups to make do for the fight ahead.

“Yeah, and no one else has them so…” answers one of two marines and Tuggey who he followed into the tower command room. Outside, Dooley and the remaining marines were prepping the radio tower to stand up to an inbound wave of Covenant.

Tuggey shoves the marine out of the way and attempts to do the same with Ryan. It doesn’t work of course, her hands smacking his armor and her shoulder only pushing him with enough force to make the armor of his lower chest twitch, but he gets the idea and steps aside. She cracks her knuckles, muttering low enough that the marine can’t hear but Ryan with his augmented senses can, “Here goes that crash course in coding, Bragg.”

Her fingers clack against the touch keys on the computer, and the windows begin rapidly multiplying as she inputs command after command. Ten long minutes and thirty four seconds pass, and Ryan can hear through the walls outside that something big and heavy was being moved. Presumably, the carcasses of warthogs and crates being shoved together to make barricades using the forklift.

“No, left! I said left!!” He could hear Dooley shouting outside.

“YES! Suck my lady dick, computer bitch!” Tuggey whoops as the screens clear into a single new window, and she practically slams her fist into one of the keys. A tab opens in front of them, reading out her voice and singing soft static in constant zigzagging lines. Tuggey moves out of the way as Ryan approaches the mic.

“Radio Tower Candid, Outpost 76,” Ryan begins, reading out coordinates, “This is Petty Officer Spartan 060, does anyone copy?”

There’s radio silence of about five seconds before he repeats the callout. Tuggey knocks her knuckles against his armor to gesture him to move.

“I got this.” she says as he once again gives her the space. Tuggey moves the mic to her, making a small inhale.

“Tuggey to Fireteam Red Snake, Fireteam Blue Bird, and _Michael Jones, you answer this damn radio tower call or I’m going to shove my rifle so far up your ass I can use you as a rifle sleeve!”_

Ryan shows no outward signs of how hard he does a double take as Tuggey throws out the window several procedures of respective decorum, and gets an immediate answer of _“Jesus fucking calm your damn tits, okay! Okay! I’m answering! Ya happy?”_

“I will be if we can get some extra hands. We just cleared the tower but we have three full Phantoms coming our way, and we already lost Sergeant Riley and a third of our troops.” Two-fifths, Ryan corrects in his own head, but he remains quiet as Tuggey and Jones continue.

_“Oh, Sergeant Asshole kicked the bucket?”_ asks the disembodied voice of Jones. Jones, if Ryan is remembering correct, is another ODST from the same company as Tuggey and Dooley. The three were split, Tuggey and Dooley with the same squad as Ryan, while Jones went with another squadron including the Spartan-III Gavin-G005, prior to leaving _In Amber Clad_ for the planet surface.  

“Yeah, two needles to the face. Benson threw up and Dooley got the deets. What’s your status and have you heard from anyone else?” Tuggey asks.

Outside, over the sound of the forklift screeching its reversal, Ryan can hear Dooley shouting, “What part of steer left are you not hearing, you _whore_!”

“I’m going to help the others with the heavy lifting.” Ryan tells Tuggey and proceeds a swift exit without waiting for her reply. He can hear on his way out Jones informing Tuggey his squad was good to go and that the Reds and Blues were busy engaging in a dick measuring contest between themselves and the Covenant.

For the most part, the carcasses of the wrecked or broken vehicles used by the previous personnel for the tower were aligned up into interlocking barricades. However, Dooley’s taut shoulders and the hands cradling the front of his visor is more than enough of a tale to tell Ryan how frustrated the ODST is. The forklift halts backing up, its arms empty of the the load it had been carrying that sat uselessly in front of it. The skinned warthog vehicle it had been carrying was on its side, missing two tires and much of its armor stripped to be reinforced elsewhere.

To the marine driving the forklift’s credit, it’s at least _close_ to the line-up for the barricade. It is also pathetically askew at an angle, sticking out in exactly the same way as a puzzle piece from a 150-piece puzzle trying to fit into a 5000 piece mural.

Dooley, catching a glimpse in his peripherals, lifts the top of his visor out from his hands to regard Ryan, and Ryan isn’t sure if he’s trying to make a joke or if he’s serious as he asks, “Please tell me you know your left from your right?”

“Well I don’t need to write the letters on my hands, if that’s what you mean.” Ryan says dryly, which earns him a small snort of laughter from Dooley that shakes his shoulders and has his hands falling from his head. He walks toward the forklift to shoo the marine out of the driver’s seat, and as he does Ryan sizes up the warthog they were trying to align before approaching it.

Ryan minutely evens his breathing and then seizes the ruined vehicle by the undercarriage. He hears Dooley and the other marines yelling as Ryan exhales and pushes off, a slow but steady pace as he steers the ruined warthog properly into the empty gap in the barricade of broken vehicles. He pauses only to change the direction of where he is pushing in order to make sure it goes in long ways, locking the grill, tusks, and back bumper in with the rest of the vehicles comprising the barricades. Once done, he steps back, surveys his work, and then dusts his armored gloves off.

He turns, and freezes, awkwardly on the spotlight of several visors of marines and Dooley staring him down.

“What the _fuck_.” says a marine--Benson, if he remembered correctly.

“Show off!” Dooley yells, one foot inside the cab of the forklift and the other on the steps up, gripping the frame. There’s a lift in his voice though that inclines Ryan to believe he isn’t being mean.

Dooley jumps out of the now pointless forklift, and Ryan finds himself taking paces to meet him on the ground.

“We should lay out a few grenade mines on either side of the barricade too.” Ryan suggests. The radio tower has a few small closets of munitions including extra explosives and it would be a downright shame to let them waste away further.

“Sounds good. Munition closets, right?” Dooley points in the general direction of and asks for confirmation, to which Ryan nods. They both start a path toward the hidden cache of explosives, Ryan’s footsteps surprisingly light despite the heavy Mjolnir armor and his own augmented body.

As they begin collecting, Ryan relays to Dooley about Tuggey’s substantial success at getting the radio tower online and contacting the other fireteams. Dooley doesn’t seem at all surprised, and in fact seems amused, at the manner with which she spoke with on the radio. Ryan couldn’t deny it was effective, if rattling for a Spartan who lives and breathes UNSC.

“Yeah, we’re all kinda like that.” Dooley chuckles as he eyes up the crates and goes searching for a cart or lift to move the explosives out of the room instead of trying to carry them in their arms.

“All ODSTs or just your squads?” Ryan asks. Dooley points out that between them, Ryan is the most likely to be capable of lifting or moving the heavy crates without injury, and he begins the process of moving them with much more ease than the warthog.

“I’m sure all of us are like that one way or another. You can’t help but build that kind of eccentric camaraderie when you’re side by side with the same guys, jumping feet first into shit back to back for so long.” Dooley says easily, as though it’s obvious, and then he adds, “Lindsay’s concentrated chaos though. And according to Michael, Gavin’s a handful to deal with for a Spartan.”

“Spartan-III, technically.” Ryan clarifies. He’s not sure why he feels the need to clarify the difference between him and Gavin-G005.

Dooley’s visor swivels to him, “There’s a difference?”

“I’m a Spartan-II. He’s a Spartan-III. Same program name, different operations, different generation.” And Ryan is, by a margin, stronger and faster just by the defining differences in their programs. Doctor Halsey never thought highly of them of course, and some of her feelings on the matter had leaked through to the other II’s. Not all, but some. Ryan couldn’t say for sure whether the feelings of indifference he might have had for Gavin-G005 was because he was, in not so few words, a handful of personality, or because Halsey’s disdain for what she deemed an inferior copycat program had seeped into Ryan.

“Right...” Dooley nods in understanding, contrary since he does not in fact understand. He drops the subject as he shuffles around the room, and makes a pleasant surprised noise when he finds a replacement turret body they could mount on the tower or around it.

“So, how come III’s use their names and you don’t?” Dooley asks, hefting the heavy turret body up and onto the explosives crates-thankfully closed. Ryan blinks underneath his visor, caught by the question.

“We have names.” And, if he’s being honest, Ryan hasn’t heard his name used outside of another Spartan-II, Chief Mendez, Doctor Halsey, or MSgt. Ramsey. Not that he’s supposed to.  

“...so is it a classified thing, or a Spartan-II thing, or a rank thing?” They finish loading the lift with what was in the munitions closet and Ryan finds Dooley leaning against the crates, his visor turned to the side inquisitively and his arms bent back so his hands rest on the crate edge.

Technically, all of the above. Ryan’s last name is classified and thoroughly wrapped up in ONI tape and many, _many_ years of training has made it difficult for even him to remember it. It’s also rare for Spartan-II’s to call each other by name, coveting them in the shadows, the precious gems of identity they share in training. And then rank, of course, comes to play. If he dared to call MSgt. Ramsey ‘Geoff’ in hearing distance of any officer there’d be several mounds of paperwork and discipline waiting for him.

“Sorry, I can drop it.” Dooley says, snapping him out of his thoughts. He appreciates that the ODST can sense the awkwardness creeping into him. An idea, however, comes to mind.

“Tell you what.” he begins, stepping to come side to side with the ODST next to the crates of explosives, towering over him, “You’re a good shot.”

“Yeah.” Dooley snorts, his helmet bobbing with the sound. “One way to put it.”

“And we have a good sized wave of Covenant coming our way.” Ryan continues, standing almost side by side with the ODST. Unlike the much smaller ODST he doesn’t relax stance or mirror his. His hands minutely itch to do something or move somewhere rather than stay at his sides but there’s no reason for it. Even here his training dictates constant vigilance.

“Uh-huh. Where ya goin with this, buddy?” Dooley asks. Something… something about Dooley makes him question the risks of lowering vigilance. He doesn’t, the risk stays the same, but the feeling is still there and it makes Ryan pause longer than he intended between Dooley’s words and his.

“I’ll tell you my name if you can kill for me,” he pauses to run the numbers through his head, considering the squads they had cleaned out on the way to the radio tower, and considering what they were expecting coming their way, “fifty-five Covenant.”

Dooley whistles low, “That’s quite a high bar, pal.” He doesn’t, however, sound dismissive. In fact, if Ryan didn’t know any better, he sounds determined, eager even.

“Gotta have standards.” he says, to which Dooley chuckles, his shoulders shaking.  

“Fifty-five dead Covenant for your name, huh? Alright.” Dooley nods to him, and the both move to start moving the lift full of explosives.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 55 doesnt sound like a lot but they're expecting a rough estimate of 90 or so Covenant coming their way and 50's over half that hence the reaction on jeremy's part. ryan's basically challenging him to compete for kills against ryan, lindsay, the other marines, AND the explosives like an asshole (or at least that's how im rationalizing it out)
> 
> so we'll see if he can meet or beat the bar :D
> 
> comments and feedback are much appreciated, thank you everyone for waiting patiently for an update!!


End file.
